FAMOUS ATHEISTS

'There's no point in talking about God'

Exclusive: Ray Comfort challenges Hollywood hunk's agnostic thinking

Christian evangelist Ray Comfort was a platform speaker at the 2001 National Convention of American Atheists, Inc., has spoken on the subject of atheism and evolution on ABC's 'Nightline,' on the BBC, at Yale University, is a TV co-host (with actor Kirk Cameron), and is the best-selling author of more than 70 books.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a new series of columns from Ray Comfort. If you missed last week’s edition, check out Ray’s archive to learn more about … well, we’ll let you guess who.

Brad Pitt’s faith that God doesn’t exists wavers a little.

“I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism,” he told the New York Daily news.

Sometimes he’s an atheist, other times he’s not: “I don’t think anyone really knows. You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.”

What Brad Pitt says makes sense, if you don’t think about it. But if you do give some serious thought to his words, they are a little thoughtless. This is why: Billions of human beings think there is a point in thinking about it. They are Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Christians or 101 offshoots of the religions.

They think about it because they realize that there’s an elephant in the human room, and it holds its crushing foot above the heads of every one of us.

It took a full 20 years before I noticed the shadow of its ugly foot. During that time singer Andy Williams was singing his big hit “Ain’t it True?” If you are not (ain’t) familiar with the lyrics, you might like to learn them and sing them to yourself if you are ever depressed:

“Ain’t it true no matter what you do, someday when life is through, they’re gonna bury you beneath the cold, cold ground, girl,” Williams sang. “Big or small or short or fat or tall, it’s gonna get us all.”

Death got Mr. Williams recently. It’s true.

So the point in thinking about it is the point that God is eternal and He is the source of all life. If there’s an answer to the biggest problem we all have, it is in God and God alone. Not believing that there was a Creator is, as Sir Isaac Newton so aptly said, “senseless.”

According to Extra, Mr. Pitt told the Hollywood Reporter that he “got brought up being told things were God’s way, and when things didn’t work out it was called God’s plan.”

He also said, “I grew up being told God is going to take care of everything, and it doesn’t always work out that way. And then you’re told, ‘Well, it’s God’s will,’ I got my issues. Man, you don’t want to get me started.”

If I had a meal with Brad Pitt, I would tell him that he heard the wrong gospel – one that wrongly portrays God as some sort of divine butler, who will come running when we click our fingers. It doesn’t work like that, and Pitt’s not the only one who ended up disillusioned by that spurious gospel. I would also ask him to let me take him through a few of the Ten Commandments to show him that he is in great danger.

The applicable analogy would be a man who is standing on the edge of a plane, 10,000 feet above the ground. He refuses to put on a parachute because he thinks he will find out if he needs a parachute after he jumps, and until that time there’s no point in thinking about it.

To begin thinking about it is the seed that can grow into understanding the truth that “Jesus Christ has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”